Why Political Scientists do not believe we will see a President Trump

Despite his surging popularity (at least among the idiotocracy), Donald Trump’s selection as GOP Presidential candidate is a long way from being a “done deal.” Media pundits and a few high-ups in the Republican party are predicting that Trump will walk away with the nomination. However, political analysts in academia who have studied elections in the context of history aren’t so sure. While they’re not ready to count Trump out altogether, they believe that a Trump presidential nomination is highly unlikely.

Of course, with more than a year to go until the election, anything can happen – and usually does.

Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelly of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics recently posted an article on their website, Sabato’s Crystal Ball. They articulate the reasons why Donald Trump’s candidacy, as strong as it may appear for the moment, is doomed to go down in flames. Describing Trump as a “stick of dynamite thrown into the presidential pond,” they have created a new category just for him: the “Un-Nominatable Frontrunner.” The three political analysts are so certain of their reasoning, they’ve stated that “If Trump is nominated, then everything we think we know about presidential nominations is wrong.”

There’s nothing mysterious about the Sabato team’s reasoning. The bottom line is, despite his current popularity among GOP voters and the ability to fund his own campaign, Trump lacks the backing of DC insiders and the Republican establishment. Furthermore, his organization has been “thrown together” in the late stages and is bumbling along without any real strategy. Finally, Trump suffers from diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain. His penchant for speaking his mind, regardless of the consequences, may be endearing him to Joe Six-pack for the time being, but as the election draws near and people start paying closer attention to the races, chances are that Trump will have lost his appeal.

It comes down to this, according to Sabato and his colleagues:

Is Trump the kind of person to whom most Republicans (or Americans generally) would entrust the Oval Office? Would voters want to welcome Trump into their homes on television every evening for four years, not as an entertainment show host whose antics can be amusing, but as president of the United States, whose words can move markets and start wars?

We would hope that even the mentally-challenged citizens now infatuated with “The Donald” will be a little smarter about those issues when the primaries begin next year.

K.J. McElrath is a former history and social studies teacher who has long maintained a keen interest in legal and social issues. In addition to writing for The Ring of Fire, he is the author of two published novels: Tamanous Cooley, a darkly comic environmental twist on Dante's Inferno, and The Missionary's Wife, a story of the conflict between human nature and fundamentalist religious dogma. When not engaged in journalistic or literary pursuits, K.J. works as an entertainer and film composer.